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I don’t Remember that: Negotiating Memories and Epistemic Claims in Swedish High-Stake Police Interviews
Södertörn University, School of Culture and Education, Swedish Language.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3935-0644
2024 (English)In: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, ISSN 0952-8059, E-ISSN 1572-8722, Vol. 37, p. 485-515Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper employs Conversation Analysis to investigate a specific interactional environment in Swedish police interviews (PIs): sequences where the interviewee asserts an inability to recollect specific events, and the police subsequently challenge this assertion. The police interview serves as a crucial setting for reconstructing past events and identifying the distribution of knowledge among participants. While previous research has delved into the cognitive mechanisms underlying memory retrieval in PIs, there exists a scarcity of empirical investigation of how memories and their associated knowledge are interactionally managed within this high-stakes activity. Prior Conversation Analytic studies exploring how epistemic dimensions shape social interaction form the theoretical basis for the current study, including research indicating how ‘forgetfulness’ can be strategically employed as an interactional resource. Only a few studies have targeted recorded high-stakes interviews in Swedish, and the lack of such is problematic since international research have highlighted the influence of cultural and social factors on conditions and outcomes. Data used for this study comprises anonymized audio recordings (N = 51) from a preliminary murder investigation, making a valuable contribution to the understanding of interactional practices in Swedish police interviews. Results indicate a discrepancy in orientation between the police and the interviewee. The former treats the memories as accessible knowables possible to retrieve, in contrast to the latter, who uses the police’s challenge as a vehicle for contesting the ‘impossible action of remembering.’

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer Nature, 2024. Vol. 37, p. 485-515
National Category
General Language Studies and Linguistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-52568DOI: 10.1007/s11196-023-10044-9ISI: 001089599600003Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85174565934OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-52568DiVA, id: diva2:1807470
Part of project
Interactional Patterns in Swedish Police Interviews: ´Doing Objectivity´ when Asking Information Seeking Questions and Producing Reformulation, Swedish Research Council
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2021–03044Available from: 2023-10-26 Created: 2023-10-26 Last updated: 2025-10-07Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf